Closing of the Cybersecurity Summer Bootcamp

Your Excellency the First Vice-President of the Government of Spain, Ms. Nadia Calviño,

Ms. Rosa Díaz, Director General of the Spanish National Cybersecurity Institute (INCIBE),

Dear participants, INCIBE organizing committee and all others attending the sixth edition of the Cybersecurity Summer Bootcamp, good afternoon to all.

It is a great pleasure for me to speak to you today on behalf of the Inter-American Committee against Terrorism (CICTE) at the closing of the Cybersecurity Summer Bootcamp, which has been a true success. This initiative seeks to foster the exchange of experience among participants from both regions, to establish a network of knowledge and to promote diversity in the field of cybersecurity in the Americas and Spain, by bringing together prestigious professionals from many nations of the world. This year we had 670 participants at the opening, around 450 in the workshops and more than 700 participants in this closing ceremony.

Over the last two weeks, you have had the opportunity to learn from highly qualified experts, who have shared their experience on the formation of Cyber Incident Response Teams and on the regulatory and legal frameworks in Latin America and Europe, among other subjects related to the current challenges of cybersecurity. You were also able to learn at first hand about the various challenges regularly faced by cybersecurity technicians, legislators and public law enforcement officers. For the OAS, it is an honor to continue supporting this event and to advance in training citizens of the Americas in valuable knowledge that helps us make our region and our cyberspace a safer place, with more rights for more people.

Because of the cross-border nature of the Internet, we at CICTE wish to convey to you the importance of having a transnational strategy to combat the growing cyber threats in an effective manner. This will be feasible only through national and international coordination, and with the participation of different sectors of society. The Cybersecurity Summer Bootcamp is a clear example of the opportunities we can create in this fast-changing environment.

It is likewise important to approach cybersecurity as a shared responsibility, since we all have a role to play in creating and maintaining a safer cyberspace.

In that regard, I wish to share with you the four main areas on which we have learned to focus in responding to cyber threats:

1. Capacity building and the exchange of information and experience;

2. Cross-border collaboration to reduce cybercrime and mitigate possible attacks;

3. Clearly established protocols to protect national borders in cyberspace;

4. The promotion of measures that include the perspectives of gender and of vulnerable groups, in order to take their views into account and promote a more inclusive and diverse cyberspace.

To conclude, I would like to congratulate all those attending on their enthusiastic participation, and to thank the presenters and panelists for sharing their valuable knowledge. With this new edition of the "Cybersecurity Summer Bootcamp," we confirm once again the standing of this event as a leading initiative in the training of cybersecurity professionals worldwide, as well as the commitment of the Organization of American States and INCIBE to the search for mechanisms that allow us to maintain a close dialogue and to make use of technological advances in order to keep improving our capacity to respond to new threats.

Finally, on behalf of CICTE, I wish to thank the Spanish National Cybersecurity Institute for its collaboration in organizing this event, as well as the team that made it possible. The Cybersecurity Summer Bootcamp is one more milestone within the existing collaboration agreement between the OAS and Spain, through which we reinforce levels of protection internationally in a comprehensive, coordinated and effective manner.

We hope you have had a very successful "Cybersecurity Summer Bootcamp" and that we may count on your presence at the next edition.

Thank you very much.